Let's start with nice....
Who are we kidding?
A new year. Fresh discoveries about oneself and brand-spanking fun challenges lie in wait. Sounded like the harbinger of ill report, didn't I? Scratch the "lie in wait" bit. I am very grateful to the start of 2009 for it feels like anything can happen! I love that feeling...
Flying on the wings of my wondrous holiday with family I see every few years, if I'm that lucky, I was able to come into the office this morning refreshed. Today was also my first day back-to-reality in the sense that I spent time checking e-mails, reading my online tidbits from The Economist and getting caught up on the not so fortunate happenings around the world. Not that I chose willingly to ignore it, but Christmas is a special time for many of us because we can choose to forget the day we are living, forget the hour, truly enjoy the moment. Not only did I celebrate the holidays, I celebrated love. It is a remarkable thing to be surrounded by so much generous affection and sincerity. How often does it come into your life? Perhaps never enough. Instead of focusing on economic events and disastrous occurences, I thought I'd reflect somewhat on what I treasure most - relationships with people. Mainly because of two things:
1) Love
2) Awareness
This may sound a bit silly, but while the first is a familiar term, the second may not be for everyone. Love, for obvious reasons. It gives me something I can't have on my own. The chance to give to others. The chance to feel love. Real love is truly unselfish and the capacity to want to know others, their thoughts, feelings...Real love is faithful, unwavering, inconstant, unconditional. How hard it is to know and feel this kind of love at any given moment. After all, all the human beings I know are inconstant. But, even just to have for a moment, is beautiful. God gives me that kind of love, but He is the only one who can. In the meantime, I'm blessed to have friends and family who try their very best to love they can. It is truly a remarkable thing to have that sense of purity, when someone does something without expecting anything in return. Remarkable that I saw so much of that kind of love during Christmas. I'm beyond happy right now.
Awareness. I'm an intellectual nerd when it comes to this stuff. Relationships with people teach me things all the time that I would never discover on my own. I can read all the books I want and record all my introspective thoughts, but it will do me no good if I sit in a chair locked up with the windows and doors shut, wondering, Cogito ergo sum? That sounds about right...Now where I do go from here? Not far if I can't see past these walls...
And so, thank God for family and for experiences I could never have on my own. I cannot even being to start showing how much it means.
